Political attacks on the AAP government sharpened a day after it scrapped the 62 criteria for nursery admissions.

The BJP said the decision may prove counterproductive by giving school managements a free hand to harass parents while the Congress said the move, which violates the Delhi High Court’s directions, would spark chaos.

Delhi Congress spokesperson Chattar Singh said: “The AAP government is only trying to gain publicity and destroying the whole system.”

By disrespecting Court directions and not taking either parents or school management along, the Arvind Kejriwal government is trying to create chaos to gain publicity.”

BJP’s Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Vijender Gupta said by scrapping all quotas and freeing up 75 per cent seats in schools, the government has given a free hand to schools to harass parents.

Even those students who live in the school’s neighbourhood could be denied admission by schools as they are now not bound to give admission to such students, he said.

“The parents will become victims of managements’ dictatorship and tricks for extraction of money,” he added.

“The AAP government has made the entire nursery admission process a puppet in the hands of school management.,” he said. “The scraping of management quota and criteria listed by schools in nursery admission is not only bad in law but also allows the management to act arbitrarily. It has also opened the channel of receiving donation,” he cautioned

“It has also paved the way for litigation threatening to delay in admission of children to nursery classes,” said Gupta.    

“The management quota was hitherto 20 per cent. The BJP in-principle favours scraping of the quota.  But by virtue of its lack of proper planning and policy, the government has indirectly allowed the managements to fill the 75 percent of the admissions by their choice and whims,” said Gupta.

He said the scrapping of quotas within the 75 per cent general category seats will lead to greater harassment of parents.

Pointing to the confusion over the issue, Gupta said the government has not specified as to what criteria and procedure should now be adopted by the school managements.